Three Peaks and a Valley #9: Making Friends on the Train

This series, Three Peaks and a Valley refers to three positive moments and one negative moment that happens during a twenty-four hour period of my life. When I’m feeling down, my mom tells me to remember one positive and one negative thing about the experience: a peak and a valley.

Three Peaks and a Valley aims to outweigh the negative with the positive.

Three Peaks and a Valley is a regular miniseries that, by sharing my own moments of joy and vulnerability I hope that you’ll think about your own.

PEAK: I made friends with one of the attendants on the train. During the last half hour of the nearly four-hour-long ride, one of the attendants got chatty with me. He was also getting off at the Springfield stop after working for nearly 12-hours straight. I think he was excited to get home. He told me all about his three adult boys and how that’s different from raising his two stepdaughters and daughter now.

He’s pretty excited to work a different route soon that necessitates staying overnight in a hotel because “I’ll have the television remote all to myself for the first time in months and a bathroom counter without ten different shampoos on it. You have one head, why do you need ten different shampoos? I don’t get it. My boys and I had one bar of soap, one stick of deodorant, a couple of toothbrushes and we were good to go. This has been quite an adjustment.”

I was horribly train-sick from the rumbling and rocking and faint metallic smell the whole ride so he was a welcome distraction.

PEAK: I made it home! I’ve been in my pajamas and in bed since 5:00 p.m. with food and no plans to move in the near future. New York City was a good experience but I’m looking forward to more rural travel this weekend.

PEAK: My dogs were all weird and excited to see me. Man, dogs are great. I missed my dogs. Take a look at this picture of my odd little chihuahua Stella.

VALLEY: Train sickness is no joke. You know how you feel right before you’re about to puke–you get all sweaty and that funny tickle in your throat? I was right there. I honestly thought I wasn’t going to make it off the train before I hurled.

As always, share your peaks and valleys with me in the comment section below! Happy travels.

2 thoughts on “Three Peaks and a Valley #9: Making Friends on the Train”

PEAK: Your blog about Coda made me laugh out loud. He and I had a good chat/text via Skype this morning… so my heart was full.
PEAK: Despite leaving late, I made it to yoga on time and didn’t have to face that awkward moment of entering when everything is quiet.
PEAK: My last day of work for three weeks was yesterday…that will be a peak for … well, three weeks.
Valley: I’m having a hard time thinking of a valley. Yesterday, I poured creamer all over the dog. He is sticky but he smells yummy. Does that work?